Günthert, Sebastian; Naumann, Simone; Siegmund, Alexander

Abstract

Whereas, until the mid-20th century, mainly agricultural processes characterised the landscape structure of Tenerife, tourism and related economic sectors have had the greatest effect on the anthropogenic landscape transformation in recent times. The associated socioeconomic change
from an agricultural to a service economy has led to an increased abandonment of agricultural land in rural areas. The quantitative analysis of these agricultural land use dynamics is the main objective of the following study. For this purpose a quantitative analysis of object-based land use
classifications of SPOT 1-data (1986/88), SPOT 4-data (1998) as well as RapidEye-data (2010) has been done, based on a modified, multitemporal post classification comparison. Moreover, an additional object-based classification process for identifying the total agriculturally affected area
of Tenerife on the basis of high-resolution RGB orthophotos is presented. This method focuses on the edge-based detection of agricultural land, including agricultural set-aside respectively successional fallow areas. The results obtained indicate, that many agricultural regions especially
in the north of the island are characterised by continuous agricultural abandonment. In addition, the analysis shows that about one third of the total area of Tenerife is shaped by agricultural use. However, at present approximately 72% of this area consists of agricultural set-aside.